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Tuesday, 28 February 2012

Never put off till tomorrow...

The day started today with an argument with The Boy at 7.09am “No your trumps are louder!”
I say the day started but that’s not strictly true! I had already been up
for an hour and had cleaned the wetroom, checked my emails, managed to dress
myself and brush my hair...
I read an article this month entitled: ‘Simple Ways to be Happy’ and it
extolled the virtues of the ‘One Minute Rule’. It read: “Never postpone any
task that can be completed in less than a minute.” I think its author needs to
come round to my house.
I’d like to set the scene. There is a ten inch police car on the floor in
front of the kitchen sink, primed to break both my legs, a life-sized baby doll
in the through-fare in the dining room, again potential broken neck. There is a
small boy’s slipper, in a hat on my dressing table, a popped balloon in pieces
in the lounge. A pair of knickers, a sock and a cardi on the stairs. A tea
towel in the middle of back yard and a plastic bowl under the bathroom sink,
and we don’t have a leak.
We haven’t had company for a while!
My point is, I already soak up every spare minute of the day doing one
minute jobs. Responding to emails, organising packed lunches, putting another
load in. If I engaged with every act that took less than one minute, we would
literally never leave the house. Most the time I just leave things where they
are until one of the Mess Makers picks it up and moves it somewhere else (the
police car is now in front of the cooker). What would be the point doing
anything else? In the times I do attempt Operation Clear Up (when we have
people coming and if they’re fellow parents sometimes not even then) I’ll often
behave much like a pin ball, bouncing from moving one thing to another place,
while finding another in the process and veering off in another trajectory,
ricocheting in a desultory fashion.
I was having a chat with one of the Inner Circle the other day and we agreed
that mothers of our generation are experts at having it all, doing
everything... badly. How I yearn for a sense of completeness, for a sense of a
job done well, not just a creating a Joseph costume at 11pm, thrown together by
cutting holes in a laundry basket liner... anyhoo, such is the inspiration of
tomorrow’s ‘We will be mostly...’
And of course, I’ve been hoodwinked by vapid articles not delivering in the
magazine world since the days of Mizz, so I don’t know why I’m surprised!